What founders in developing countries learn about organizing microenterprise growth
Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › Research › peer-review
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What founders in developing countries learn about organizing microenterprise growth. / Pötz, Katharina Anna; Hjortsø, Carsten Nico Portefée.
2015. Paper presented at The 75th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › Research › peer-review
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TY - CONF
T1 - What founders in developing countries learn about organizing microenterprise growth
AU - Pötz, Katharina Anna
AU - Hjortsø, Carsten Nico Portefée
N1 - Best Paper Proceedings
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Entrepreneurship holds significant potential for advancing developing countries but there is increasing recognition that these effects will not only depend on easing capital constraints and institutional support but also on entrepreneurial talent and learning. Based on analyzing nine case studies of microenterprise growth in Tanzania, this study therefore investigates what microenterprise founders learn about effective resource orchestration (RO) from organizational process experience. Our findings suggest that they first learn to orchestrate relatively simple and informal ‘micro-programs’ for gathering resources. Only upon organizational growth, they experience an internal ‘organizing shock’ that draws their attention to more effective RO. However, due to environmental conditions, this experience can take place comparably late in the growth process, thereby increasing the chances of unnecessary and costly organizational failure. In this regard, we find that only those founders that rapidly make sense of ineffective processes, gain management knowledge from different sources, and devote time and energy to managerial tasks, manage to sustain organizational growth by learning to make ‘fixes’ for internal problems and diversify more strategically. The findings lead to a set of propositions about founders’ learning from organization process experience in opportunity-rich, growth-constrained environments, and are integrated into a framework for microenterprise growth.
AB - Entrepreneurship holds significant potential for advancing developing countries but there is increasing recognition that these effects will not only depend on easing capital constraints and institutional support but also on entrepreneurial talent and learning. Based on analyzing nine case studies of microenterprise growth in Tanzania, this study therefore investigates what microenterprise founders learn about effective resource orchestration (RO) from organizational process experience. Our findings suggest that they first learn to orchestrate relatively simple and informal ‘micro-programs’ for gathering resources. Only upon organizational growth, they experience an internal ‘organizing shock’ that draws their attention to more effective RO. However, due to environmental conditions, this experience can take place comparably late in the growth process, thereby increasing the chances of unnecessary and costly organizational failure. In this regard, we find that only those founders that rapidly make sense of ineffective processes, gain management knowledge from different sources, and devote time and energy to managerial tasks, manage to sustain organizational growth by learning to make ‘fixes’ for internal problems and diversify more strategically. The findings lead to a set of propositions about founders’ learning from organization process experience in opportunity-rich, growth-constrained environments, and are integrated into a framework for microenterprise growth.
KW - Former LIFE faculty
KW - Business and management
KW - Blueprints
KW - Entrepreneurship
KW - Learning
KW - Organzational processes
KW - Africa
M3 - Paper
Y2 - 7 August 2015 through 11 August 2015
ER -
ID: 143214216